[ethbr1]

All US automakers are doing the same thing. There's gentle up-marketing collusion.

The issue at root is that auto demand is a finite, population-based amount. Automakers are all pretty good at margin and manufacturing cost control.

So that leaves the only independent variable that can influence revenue and profits as {average sold vehicle price}.

New entrants face a scale issue: it's difficult to compete with the larger manufacturers' production costs with orders of magnitude less sales volume.

Which is why you historically only saw state-sponsored new manufacturers break into the market (read: Japan, Korea, China).

Electrification turned some of this on its head, but not completely. GM, Ford, et al. can still build just enough mid-market electrics to spoil others volumes, without attempting to build something really good and cannibalizing their own luxury vehicles.